How to draw what you don't know?

This afternoon I started working on an illustration to go with a research highlight for the Functional Glycomics Gateway newsletter, published by Nature Publishing Group in collaboration with the Consortium for Functional Glycomics. One of the articles they're highlighting this month is about an anti-angiogenic peptide called Anginex that binds to the galactose-binding lectin Galectin-1. Through an unknown mechanism, which the data suggests does not involve multivalency, this binding event leads to a several-fold increase in the binding affinity of Galectin-1 to its carbohydrate ligands. There is a crystal structure of Galectin-1, an NMR solution structure of Anginex, and a rough idea of where the peptide docks onto Galectin-1, but the details of the interaction, and how it affects carbohydrate binding, are still unknown.

So, how do I draw it? Well, simply, for starters, because it's only a small spot illustration. Above are some thumbnails I did while thinking through it. Since I don't know exactly where Anginex goes or in what orientation, I thought I'd try using typography to illustrate the effect it has on Galectin-1 binding. First I tried having it sort of wrap around the protein, ostensibly squeezing the lectin so that it would clamp down tighter on the carbohydrate. But that seemed too suggestive of a mechanism that is almost certainly not grounded in any sort of reality. Playing around with the letters I realized that the A in Anginex could be shaped into the head of an equilibrium arrow to show how the peptide perturbs the on/off equilibrium, a much more likely scenario. I'm all for using metaphors, but I do try to keep the misleading ones to a minimum.

Blast from the Past

I was going through some files and came across this image I made in July, 2006, using only Photoshop and the trackpad on my Macbook (I hadn't started using Illustrator yet). My postdoc advisor mentioned that it would be nice to have a figure depicting the system we were developing - heterobifunctional ligands that would bind to both a decavalent IgM antibody and the carbohydrate-binding cell surface receptor, CD22. Because CD22 engages its ligands with such low affinity, multivalency is needed to acheive stable binding. Subsequent to this figure, I made many cleaner variations using vector graphics in Illustrator, but my advisor refused to replace this one in his talks. To me, it represents the beginning of my serious consideration of actually doing science illustration for a living. Not only did I have a blast drawing it, I experienced first-hand the utility of trying to draw what you think is going on in the eppendorf tube. It forced me to really think about the relative concentrations of everything and how the receptors might cluster.  It led me to search the literature until I found out that the Fab fragments bend down as though on a hinge to engage their cognate antigens, as shown. Prior to that, we had been drawing the bound IgM as more of a tee-pee shape, or like the claw from that bowling alley game that theoretically retrieves stuffed teddy bears with the claw but is more likely to just trap a small child within its walls. Likewise with the projects I take on now, what I'd much rather hear than, "Ooh, it's lovely!" is, "By jove, I've never thought of it that way!".

Website graphic has a new home!

The website this image was made for is complete and you can now find it here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day...

...from this lucky leprechaun, blissfully unaware of the world's woes as he supervises a corned beef in the crock pot. This is not my artwork though.  My Grandpa O'Reilly handpainted this little guy, and many others, before perching them on tree branches in his yard that were so high up I could never understand how he got them there. Despite the precarious living arrangement, his only injuries were sustained much later at the hands of the USPS.

Fukushima 50

Careers in Chemistry

Today I'm looking forward to giving a talk to undergrads about careers in science illustration as part of the Chem Club's Careers in Chemistry series. This drawing is part of my "handy tips for any career" slide.

Expanding Horizons

This weekend a colleague and I will participate in Expanding Your Horizons, a program that encourages young women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. We are running an activity for 11-16 year olds that involves grinding up spinach leaves, extracting the organic molecules, and separating different colored pigment molecules using thin-layer chromatography. We made this handout to show them what they'll be looking at. This is how I imagine it going down. We explain to them that spinach is green because of all of these colorful molecules that are made by spinach plants. They say, "Wow! We see colors because of chemistry? That's awesome. But my physics teacher says that seeing colors is optics and that has to do with physics." "Nope," we say, "Your teacher doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Chemistry is all that matters." "Oh, okay. So do molecules like these make strawberries red, and blueberries blue?" "You bet!" We say. They get excited. The wheels start turning. One of them says, "If molecules make them look a certain way, are there molecules that make them taste a certain way, and feel a certain way?" "Yes, and yes." We say. Another one says, "Are there molecules in my t-shirt that make it this color?" "Yes, synthetic dyes are molecules!". Them: "Is chemistry everywhere?!?!"  Us: "It's everywhere!!!"  Them: "YOU ARE BLOWING OUR MINDS HOW CAN WE LEARN MORE?!?!?!?"   Us: "STUDY CHEMISTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Or, something like that.

Modesty prevails and we close in on the finish line

Here's an update to the Jan 31st and Feb 16th posts. Slowly but surely I am managing to eke out enough time to finish up the final illustration asap. Most of this was done in airports, in the air, and at a Day's Inn in San Francisco where we stayed while visiting our new and unfathomably adorable 2-week old niece. Now I just need to finalize and clean it up. We are sooooo close to having the book out.

Low-budget animation on making salt

Untitled from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

I made this quick animation for my chemistry students this week as a lead-in to talking about the Born-Haber cycle, which describes how much energy needs to be put in and how much is released when sodium chloride is made from sodium metal and chlorine gas. The YouTube video I showed of it actually happening is way cooler. I didn't bother trying to compete with that.

Wrapping up the week with icons

This week one of my biotech clients tasked me with replacing some icons for their website. They are rollover buttons to trigger the banner images I already made for them, which describe their cancer therapeutics, gold nanoparticle, and stem cell reagents programs. My only instructions were to make them a little more relevant than the ones they have now: a globe with an arrow around it, a desktop computer, and a magnifying glass.

Seeking subtlety in silicon

Today I've just started to digitize the sketch I posted on Jan. 31, since we've decided to go with this illustration for the chapter on selected elements in the chemistry poetry book. I'll stick fairly close to the sketch, but I am going to attempt to tone down the augmentation and make Sili's companion look a little less like she just left the Playboy mansion.

Let them have color!

This particular client is not a fan of color. I think that if there were glasses available that allowed the viewer to see the world in grayscale, she would be first in line to purchase a pair. In black. She was, in fact, the inspiration for the series of eucalyptus tree paintings I did. But her students have spoken, and they want color. So after a very long week I was really looking forward to sitting down and playing around with this. The website has a maroon and gold theme, based on the school colors, so I took the maroon and incorporated its split complement colors in various permutations. For some reason I thought it would be more fun to present some options in this Warhol screenprint-inspired format. If Marilyn Monroe were a cysteine-reactive protein.

Final ad layout for medical illustration sourcebook

Well, you people were no help at all, so here's what I'm going with:

Mmmm.... self-promotion

I am putting a full-page ad in the Association of Medical Illustrators' Medical Illustration Source Book, where many of the science illustrators that I admire also advertise. This morning I worked on the layout for it, but I am stuck. Little help, please?

Sili gets the last laugh

Okay, I know I said the chemistry poetry book was done. But now that we've gotten the proofs and realize that some little things will need to be changed, I am considering replacing one of the illustrations. This is just a rough sketch I did today to get some ideas down. The poem, written of course by Mala Radhakrishnan, is about an atom of Silicon named Sili, who is teased relentlessly in school because, being neither metal nor non-metal, he was having trouble fitting in.

"

Though like a metal (it was quite shiny),

Its conductivity was tiny.

Its band gap was too far from little,

And unlike metals, ’twas rather brittle.

It clutched electrons way too tightly,

So metals would tease it daily and nightly.

Yet nons would also jeer and nettle,

“You dress and look just like a metal!”

What pain ’cause it did not conform,

No box for it to check on forms.

Few others could know the lonely void

That it lived as a “metalloid.”

"

Of course, he eventually proves to be very useful indeed, and everyone loves him...

"

And nowadays, sili’s still lionized.

Its band gap equals a perfect size

To dope with nearby brothers and sisters

And make computers from transistors.

As if its utility has not yet impressed us,

It’s also in quartz and in glass and asbestos.

And silicon’s used in chemical plants

For lubricants and breast implants.

Sili, its fourteen electrons so strong,

Proved all of its skeptical peers to be wrong

When it managed to move all the way out to Cali

And founded its very own aptly-named valley.

"

With this illustration I tried to incorporate as many silicon-containing materials as I could, including a computer, a quartz watch, solar panels, a car, glass, bluetooth device, and some, shall we say, augmentation. (Obviously I'm talking about Sili's calves.)

Couldn't help but notice...

I have an illustration project right now that involves a model of the P-glycoprotein, a molecular pump that non-specifically transports small hydrophobic molecules out of cells. It's presumably there to keep toxins out of our cells, but it's also a pain in the neck when therapeutic drugs meant to be delivered to the cell are pumped out of it.  Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that a model of a similar ABC transporter, at a certain angle, looks decidedly bunny-like, so I just had to go with it.

You can make your own molecular bunny! The pdb accession code is 2HYD. I used the molecular visualization program VMD*. Get the surface model into this perspective and highlight residues 10 to 45 for the left ear, 155 to 190 for the right ear, 331 for the nose, 217 to 219 for the left eye, and 326 to 328 for the right eye. I won't lie to you. I made the mouth in photoshop. I don't expect anyone other than myself to waste perfectly good time to make this very creepy looking rabbit, but you just never know.

*Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., "VMD - Visual Molecular Dynamics" J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.

Early science art

Where I found my glasses this morning

Needlestack

Needing a break from making lecture slides now and then, I'm excited to have this project to work on. I first posted a rough(er) version of it here on December 14th. My very good friend has just embarked on her independent academic career in a top-ranked chemistry department, and of course needs some graphics for her website. In her lab they use fancy mass spectrometry techniques to identify enzymes in their active state within complex biological systems - the proverbial needle in the haystack. A needle in a haystack could be found with a strong enough magnet though. Their problem is much much harder.  It's more like finding a needle in a needlestack. Wait, no, that would be easy. How about finding a specific needle in a needlestack? There we go. Let's say they want to find the needle in the needlestack that only sews up toe holes on pink sweatsocks, for example, and of those, only the ones that are currently in business. So they throw in a holey pink sweatsock. They wait for the needle to start sewing, and then pull out the sock. In the illustration above, an enzyme's reactive cysteine (needle) has been trapped upon reacting with (sewing) an iodoacetimide (pink sock). In the interest of full disclosure, I personally have as much experience with activity-based protein profiling as I do with sewing (that being none), so I may not be the most qualified to make this analogy.

Potential and Kinetic Energy